CLT
UPDATE
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Barbara
Gray: In the end just another hypocritical pol
Barbara Gray, the longtime town politician known for her fights to preserve open space, plans to subdivide her Edmands Road property, saying sometimes development can be beneficial....
"There is a benefit to development that is not often on the front burner for some Planning Board members," said Gray, who later this year will move from Framingham to the San Francisco area with her husband, Norm Gardner....
Town Counsel Chris Petrini, who helped guide the board through the legal maze during Tuesday night's meeting, sided with Planning Board member Carol
Spack, who voted against Gray's plan.
"For years she would have been leading the charge to create open space," said
Petrini. "I find it ironic and unfortunate she decided to do this with her own property."
"It's unfortunate the applicant has chosen to create legal uncertainty by shoehorning three lots onto the parcel where it could legally and most sensibly be divided into two lots," said
Petrini.
The MetroWest Daily News
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Ex-politician to subdivide her lot
If you hang around anywhere long enough, you are liable to see and hear just about anything.
Yesterday I heard everything when I heard a partial quote elicited from the one and only Barbara Gray, retired state rep and erstwhile champion of the sylvan glade.
"There is," Gray told my fellow scribe, Craig MacCormack, "a benefit to development."
I don't think I over-dramatize when I say this is like learning Smokey the Bear is trying to sell matches to children in the forest.
What Gray failed to underscore is that the "benefit" of the development in question is accruing mostly, if not completely, to her.
The MetroWest Daily News
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Land plan leaves no Gray area
By Tom Moroney
Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
This is so good we didn't want you to miss it!
Former Framingham State Rep. Barbara Gray was the
initial reason for my ever getting involved in political activism.
Back in 1985 she was known as "the seat belt law
lady" and somebody had to help Jerry
Williams fight her law. That somebody became Chip Ford,
sign-painter ... and here I still am today, 19 years later. I've often
acknowledged that if it wasn't for Jerry Williams I never would have
become involved in politics. But actually, when you come right down to it,
it was Barbara Gray who forced my hand with her obsessive mandatory seat
belt law. Jerry just rose in opposition to her, and enticed me into the
fray as an ally.
We beat back Barbara Gray and her cadre of
safety-at-any-price zealots on the 1986 ballot when the voters agreed
with us and repealed her law. That should have been the end of my
activism, but she just came back year after year
after year proposing it again and again.
Every spring following her
defeat on the ballot, she and I would confront each other in our annual
ritual before the Legislature's Public Safety Committee and in the media
and we'd have at it. For seven more years my side prevailed. In 1993 she
got it through a Legislature-with-fading-memory once again. Governor
Weld vetoed it, I lobbied for days to sustain his veto, but in the end
it was overridden by a few votes. Jerry and a group of committed
activists with me at the lead again put another repeal referendum on the
1994 ballot, but it was our time to lose.
Barbara Gray also proposed bills to mandate that
margarine be served in restaurants, that wrestling be banned in
Massachusetts, and that pulp be prohibited in orange juice, according to
Tom Maroney, the MetroWest Daily News columnist who'd sarcastically
suggested it.
State Rep. Barbara Gray was a Republican when I met
her. A few years later she was challenged for her House seat in the
Republican primary and it looked like she'd lose. So her Framingham
liberal friends launched a successful write-in campaign for her on the
empty Democrat primary ticket. After she lost the Republican primary,
she ran in the general election as a Democrat against the guy who beat
her in the primary, and defeated him.
Ironically, a couple of years ago Barbara Anderson and I were
off on vacation out west, buckled into our seats on a Southwest Airlines
jet, and who should come walking up the aisle to take the seats directly
in front of us but -- you guessed it -- Barbara Gray and her husband
Norm Gardner! Talk about small worlds. And yes, after a bit of a reunion
of course I checked to make sure she was buckled-up before
take-off!
So now Barbara Gray, icon of the self-righteous Nanny State and all
it holds dear, has retired from politics, is moving to San Francisco,
and has her land to sell. Principles and scruples be damned, there's
money to be made!
And they wonder how I ever became so cynical?
I wonder if she's still using her seat belt,
margarine, and drinking pulp-free orange juice? Maybe Jesse Ventura has
changed her mind about her proposed ban on wrestlers now that he's
teaching at the Kennedy School of Government?
Barbara Gray, soon to be gone but certainly not
forgotten: just another greedy hypocritical pol in the end.
|
|
|
Chip
Ford |
The MetroWest Daily News
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Ex-politician to subdivide her lot
By D. Craig MacCormack, Staff Writer
FRAMINGHAM -- Barbara Gray, the longtime town politician known for her fights to preserve open space, plans to subdivide her Edmands Road property, saying sometimes development can be beneficial.
Gray yesterday downplayed the Planning Board's lukewarm endorsement of her plan to split her 3.5 acres at 220 Edmands Road into three lots, saying the harsh words from one member and rejection by another will not stop her.
"There is a benefit to development that is not often on the front burner for some Planning Board members," said Gray, who later this year will move from Framingham to the San Francisco area with her husband, Norm Gardner.
The Planning Board approved the plan, 3-1, but noted that it does not meet the town's requirement not to include wetlands in the calculations of frontage, said Chairman Tom Mahoney.
Town Counsel Chris Petrini, who helped guide the board through the legal maze during Tuesday night's meeting, sided with Planning Board member Carol
Spack, who voted against Gray's plan.
"For years she would have been leading the charge to create open space," said
Petrini. "I find it ironic and unfortunate she decided to do this with her own property."
"It's unfortunate the applicant has chosen to create legal uncertainty by shoehorning three lots onto the parcel where it could legally and most sensibly be divided into two lots," said
Petrini.
The Planning Board must endorse plans that provide adequate area and access along with appropriate frontage. There is no stipulation on the inclusion of wetlands in the state regulations.
The property has wetlands on all three lots, meaning the calculations Gray used do not meet that local requirement. The board included a note on the plan indicating its halfhearted endorsement.
While Vice Chairwoman Ann Welles told Gray she was "disappointed" with the proposal, in the end she voted for it.
Member Sue Bernstein, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker, recused herself from the hearing because the property is listed in several publications and can be picked up by any agent.
The new lots and the frontage on the parcel will be on Winch Street, Mahoney said. The new homes would be built behind the current location of a barn that is expected to be torn down, said Mahoney. Gray's current home would be on a 1.5-acre lot and the new homes would be on lots of about one acre.
He said he does not look at Gray's plan any differently, given her status as an open space advocate, he said.
"I just view it as another application," he said. "You have to take the emotion out of it. If she meets the letter of the law, we really don't have any choice. That's all we can look at.
"With the qualifications we included in our approval, I feel comfortable," said Mahoney.
Return to
top
The MetroWest Daily News
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Land plan leaves no Gray area
By Tom Moroney
If you hang around anywhere long enough, you are liable to see and hear just about anything.
Yesterday I heard everything when I heard a partial quote elicited from the one and only Barbara Gray, retired state rep and erstwhile champion of the sylvan glade.
"There is," Gray told my fellow scribe, Craig MacCormack, "a benefit to development."
I don't think I over-dramatize when I say this is like learning Smokey the Bear is trying to sell matches to children in the forest.
What Gray failed to underscore is that the "benefit" of the development in question is accruing mostly, if not completely, to her.
You see, Babs is leaving town, heading off to California, and before she goes, she is subdividing her own little slice of heaven on Framingham's woodsey northside into three lots, two of which are most likely buildable enough to hold homes.
In a phrase, the woman is cashing out and leaving in her wake the last thing I would have figured on: new construction.
To put this in its proper con, think of spotting the most dedicated vegetarian you know at a restaurant lunging lustily into a big juicy cheeseburger. Or me, a true-blue Yankees fan, suddenly rooting for Pedro to throw a no-hitter.
Barbara Gray, in all her years as a state rep and local activist, came off as the region's most vociferous opponent of hammers, nails, shingles, two-by-fours and everything else that went into -- dare we speak its name? -- modern suburban development.
At a May 2000 Town Meeting, as the body deliberated a proposal to create an Open Space Commission, and the idea seemed doomed, it was Gray who tried to rescue it.
For her lofty and impassioned rhetoric that night, one might justifiably have dubbed her the Winston Churchill of the birches and the babbling brook.
As this newspaper reported, she "took the floor with a straight-from-the-gut plea to protect open space 'that's disappearing at an unbelievable rate.'"
"It's a quality of life issue," she said. "Give us something money can't buy. Support this article."
My God. It makes you want to run right out to see if your dues for Sierra Club are up to date.
In the same year, a plan was floated to transform the gorgeous Eastleigh Farm on her side of town into 10 mini estates. Each mini estate would be situated on at least 10 acres of land.
And while some lauded this low housing density, Gray seemed unimpressed. The mini estates were good for only the "very, very wealthy," she was quoted as saying. And thus the land, she argued implicitly, would not be as accessible to the town if the town bought the entire farm as open space.
You might say "open space" was Barbara's middle name. She campaigned vigorously to keep most of the so-called Wittenborg Woods open. She was also a member of that quintessential open-space group, the Community Preservation Act Committee.
In light of these things and our recent discovery that she is subdividing, one might reasonably wonder: Does the woman have no shame?
Oh, I think she does. Otherwise, she wouldn't have cut up her land in the low-key way she did, according to one source close to the case.
She went for what is called an ANR. In the parlance of planning and development, ANR stands for "approval not required." Without getting too technical, it means you don't have to go through a full and rigorous review by, say, the local community's planning board.
The Framingham Planning Board, beset with their own image problems, did vote to agree to the ANR procedure. But not before at least one member said she was disappointed in Gray. Another, the infamous Sue Bernstein, recused herself from the vote all together.
One can only begin to guess at why. Perhaps Bernstein, back with the board after she was dumped by voters in the wake of a state ethics fine of $2,000, is a real estate broker by day.
Perhaps she recused herself because, who knows, Gray's little house plots could turn a tidy profit down the road.
But don't worry, Barbara. All is forgiven. You know I love you. Have a safe trip to California. And come back and visit soon.
Go by the old homestead and environs. Sure, some of the trees will be gone as so many others will have followed your lead.
But the good news is that somebody is bound to put up a Wal-Mart or Lowe's in your beloved north Framingham, with a public address system sending out lots of great music to all its customers.
Return to
top
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or
payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this
information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For
more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
|